SimCity Social is an insult to its namesake

Game is low on simulation, high on mindless manipulation.

It might look like SimCity, but it plays more like a Zynga game than most SimCity fans will be comfortable with.

EA

When I heard that EA was promoting its new SimCity Social spin-off with the tagline "More City, less Ville," I hoped against hope that the game might actually break the deeply entrenched, deeply annoying social gaming mold set by Zynga's ultra-popular, ultra-simple Facebook games like FarmVille. It's hard to think of an established, well-respected gaming franchise with more potential to bring a bit of deep simulation, complex strategy, and gameplay variety to the world of popular Facebook games.

After playing around with the SimCity Social beta for a few days now, though, I'm a little gobsmacked by how much that potential has been wasted. Given how satisfied the game is to ape the conventions set by Zynga's CityVille without adding any significant gameplay elements from its namesake, the tagline "More City, less Sim" would probably be more accurate for SimCity Social.

Like other SimCity games, Social gives players a relatively free hand to contract their cities with their own preferred mix of housing, businesses, and industry. Here, though, the decisions end up being more cosmetic than really meaningful to the city's operation. In any other SimCity game, each decision would be laden with consequences and tradeoffs that ripple down through a series of interrelated systems: More industrial zoning might mean more jobs and taxes, but also more pollution and crime; a fire station might help protect the citizens, but also place a drain on a limited budget.

But there are no real negative consequences to any of your decisions in Social. Sure, some decisions end up being better than others—one business might produce more money than another in the same amount of time, for instance—but even the most inefficient business will turn you into a millionaire with enough patience. The only real strategy to speak of is an incredibly basic min-maxing, to find the mix of buildings and decorations that will provide the most money and goods within the limited constraints of space and time. Past that, playing the game is really about mindlessly clicking on your buildings when they're ready to be "harvested" for money and goods, building more when you have the resources, and watching your numbers go up and up and up.

The lack of any potential for failure in SimCity Social sucks all the satisfaction out of carefully building a city. This seems to be an inherent limitation in a large number of social games. I suppose that's because imposing negative consequences would necessarily lead to the risk of catastrophic failure, which might cause players to stop playing. And if someone isn't playing SimCity Social, it means they aren't a potential customer for Diamonds, the in-game uber-currency that can turn your real money into anything from building permits to time-saving "accelerations" to the "Simoleans" needed to build most everything in the city. That's right, if you want more money in SimCity Social, you don't have to worry about calibrating your tax rate or even waiting for your existing buildings to produce more. You just have to spend real money to make fake money.

These kind of "friend or foe" decisions are what pass for multiplayer interaction in SimCity Social.

Outside of that, you're basically just rearranging your city like a glorified doll house, making it as aesthetically pleasing as possible for when your neighbors visit. This is the most "social" part of SimCity Social. To the game's credit, it does its best to make the interactions feel a little more meaningful through a goofy friend or foe system. When you click on your neighbor's apartment building, for instance, you can choose to grease their doorstep and earn some ire, or invite them to a sleepover and earn some friendliness. The resulting resources you get for each action are the same, but leaning heavily on the negative side earns you the ability to leave your friends prank gifts like pooping birds (which is as close as this game comes to fun).

For the most part, though, friends in SimCity Social are less people to play with and more ciphers to use as virtual chattel for your goals. One of the early "events" in the game, for instance, sees a UFO crashing non-threateningly in the remote outskirts of town. To remove it, you need to invite friends to staff science team positions like ET Linguist and Physicist. Not sure who to invite? Don't worry, the game will happily suggest 50 Facebook friends to pester, many of whom probably aren't even playing the game and will no doubt resent your wall spam.

Such staffing doesn't require any real sacrifice on your friends' part— when they start up the game, they, like you, will likely be bombarded with dozens of random requests for help or virtual goods. They'll mindlessly click through without thinking and without having to spend any of their in-game resources.

The sheer simplicity of this social transaction means there's no real connection created by helping a friend. It just becomes another chore, a business relationship where a few clicks and a minimum of attention is all that's being asked of either party. Of course, if you don't want to pester your friends (or don't have any), you can skip the whole thing by spending your real money on Diamonds, letting determined players pay to "solo" through some of the tougher goals.

When SimCity Social does make efforts towards true simulation, the results are almost laughable. Citizens will occasionally express anger or happiness over some incidental bit of city construction, for instance, but either way the comments can be dismissed simply by sending a virtual gift to the player represented by the citizen avatar. Fires will occasionally break out among your citizens' homes, but luckily they won't start until you've built your first fire house, and even then there's no real risk that your single fire engine won't be able to cover the entire town for a good long while. There are some businesses that can spew pollution into town as well, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out any concrete effects from all that smog.

When judged by the relatively low standards of CityVille clones, SimCity Social actually isn't a half-bad example of the form. There are plenty of building types to rearrange, brightly colored shiny things to click on, and entertaining sound effects to listen to. But the SimCity name writes a check that this game simply can't cash.

After getting a few invites from some close friends I decided I would try it. Didn't even finish the intro before I was assualted by the same "annoy the #$%^ out of all your friends to help you" crap that is found in all of Zynga's games. I promptly quit the game, removed the app and blocked it.

About 2/3 of the way down your article was possibly the most atrocious portion of the game - at least for the vast majority of us: those absolutely vile facebook notifications that spam everyone's wall. It spams the walls of players (And thus my friend's feed), it spams the walls of people who are friends with players.... Heck, it feels like It's going to call up my mother and hold her hostage until she goes and makes a facebook account and starts playing.

Glad to see you aren't attempting to tiptoe around the issues with the game. I can't say I've had much interest in the game from the get go, facebook games in general lack entertainment value in my book. (I do have to say the press briefing EA held where they crushed the 'ville' sign in the video was rather funny).

A shame really, the SimCity franchise is something I have huge respect for. Maybe their next real title will pick the name out of the mud and wash it off.

“The problem with our education system is we’ve taken this kind of narrow, reductionist, Aristotelian approach to what learning is. It’s not designed for experimenting with complex systems and navigating your way through them in an intuitive way, which is what games teach. It’s not really designed for failure, which is also something games teach." -- Will Wright

Pretty ironic statement, when SimCity Social looks like no-lose confrontation at it's finest on display rather than city management with actual consequence.

Wow, you actually made yourself sit with this for a few days? Better you than me. I was curious, but I didn't get past the part where it said it was needing permission to post on my behalf and such. I know that's a standard thing in these sorts of games, but I'd feel like a prick if any of my friends saw even one spammy post.

It's hard to think of an established, well-respected gaming franchise with more potential to bring a bit of deep simulation, complex strategy, and gameplay variety to the world of popular Facebook games.

The majority of Facebook games aren't games. They weren't designed to be fun for an extended amount of time, they were designed to be a hook to get you to enlist more people to play in the hopes that a few of them would spend real money on fake money. This makes you an honest-to-diety spammer, just like the kind you hate that send you email.

If a game can't be a draw on it's own, without being a pesterfest, then it isn't worth spending any time on.

Apparently yall have never played a facebook game before. Every one of them is like this. Every single one.

Welcome to 2010, by the way.

Yes of course, but the problem here is they are taking a name/series that was all about deep strategy and simulation and applying it to this retardation. This wouldn't be so much of a problem on it's own (what do you expect from a facebook 'game'?) if it wasn't for the fact that SimCity 5 barely looks any better.

These games only operate due to the "addiction" that they foster and promote. They push all the buttons to get you coming back.

When I think back to my FB days and what caused me to finally leave, this is right there at the top.The games were nothing but drugs that had no redeeming value. Could be taken from you at a whim. If you don't continue to advertise for them then they punish you... ect.

And they are NOT fun in the least!

It's been a while since I've seen FB games. I'm a bit surprised to see that they are still locked into this crap mode. And even more surprised that people still play this shit.

These games only operate due to the "addiction" that they foster and promote. They push all the buttons to get you coming back.

When I think back to my FB days and what caused me to finally leave, this is right there at the top.The games were nothing but drugs that had no redeeming value. Could be taken from you at a whim. If you don't continue to advertise for them then they punish you... ect.

And they are NOT fun in the least!

It's been a while since I've seen FB games. I'm a bit surprised to see that they are still locked into this crap mode. And even more surprised that people still play this shit.

Good review Kyle, thank you for not pulling any punches on this piece of festering afterbirth just because it`s from EA.

Frankly any hope that EA would treat a Sim City social game as anything but a money-grubber cashing in on a legendary franchise name was was dead for me as soon as I saw the abortion called ``'Lords of Ultima``.

Y`know, I used to crow from the rooftops how proud I was to work for Electronic Arts back when I did. Now I feel like someone who worked for the Bush administration must feel.

*sigh*At least games like Bejeweled / Solitaire Blitz are fun on their own: quick matching/card games that are engaging and involve a fair bit of skill to get the highest scores. Sure, they ask you to spend real money on them sometimes, but I see the "energy" system as a kind of moderator on how much I play. I actually prefer it that way!

Insulted drama queens. It's a Flash game on Facebook... What were you expecting? Halo 4 on steroids? lol

Actually we were expecting something that was more like Simcity.... For example:

"Hey Alice, it's Bob I heard you need more power. Well I've got enough coal plants to keep both of us powered but the water pollution is killing me. How about we set up a couple of neighbor deals to trade resources?" "Good idea but right now I'm busy sending some of my extra cops to Gary's city because he's dealing with a nasty rioting problem, can it wait for a little while?" "He should've sprung for that Riot Response Center..." "Well he hates paying for stuff, but it's a Facebook game, what are you gonna do about it?"

That sounds a lot more like SimCity game, not another annoying XVille knockoff

Insulted drama queens. It's a Flash game on Facebook... What were you expecting? Halo 4 on steroids? lol

Sup EA viral marketing. Are they having you work overtime after Tortanic and getting voted the worst company of the year? We of course most sincerely appreciate your efforts, but you might want to look into your hiring practices and aim for people with an English level mildly beyond Middle School and an IQ at least 25% higher then road gravel. That will make spotting you much more exciting! We'll be sure to tell all our friends on BookFace about it!

Don't think of it as a game, people! Look at it like a chain letter on FB. "Send me to 10 other people or you won't get more [random crap]!" The game doesn't exist to be played; it only exists to get other people to play it, hoping someone will throw away money on it.

Quote:

But the SimCity name writes a check that this game simply can't cash.

Actually, the entire point is name recognition - so EA can ca$h in on it. They don't care it hurts the brand.

After getting a few invites from some close friends I decided I would try it. Didn't even finish the intro before I was assualted by the same "annoy the #$%^ out of all your friends to help you" crap that is found in all of Zynga's games. I promptly quit the game, removed the app and blocked it.

This kind of notification started to get annoying on Facebook for me. Rather than deal with lots of awkward questions about why I wasn't helping, or had unfriended someone, I just closed the Facebook account and haven't used it again.

The only regret is I haven't been able to try out Spotify but I'm coping OK. Facebook itself I don't miss.

That's too bad. SimCity was a shoe-in for Facebook without the dumbing down. They could have taken SimCity's basic concept and made it cost real money or friend referees to buy "cool" buildings and roads, as well as a "magic jewel" for letting time speed up for X minutes a month or whatever. That would have been it.

Of course, if you don't want to pester your friends (or don't have any), you can skip the whole thing by spending your real money on Diamonds, letting determined players pay to "solo" through some of the tougher goals.

So you're saying the game discriminates against people with social phobias? And those of us who hate people?

Insulted drama queens. It's a Flash game on Facebook... What were you expecting? Halo 4 on steroids? lol

Sup EA viral marketing. Are they having you work overtime after Tortanic and getting voted the worst company of the year? We of course most sincerely appreciate your efforts, but you might want to look into your hiring practices and aim for people with an English level mildly beyond Middle School and an IQ at least 25% higher then road gravel. That will make spotting you much more exciting! We'll be sure to tell all our friends on BookFace about it!

You're not suggesting that indexal is an employee of EA, and that's why the account only posts comments on SimCity discussions, are you?

Insulted drama queens. It's a Flash game on Facebook... What were you expecting? Halo 4 on steroids? lol

Sup EA viral marketing. Are they having you work overtime after Tortanic and getting voted the worst company of the year? We of course most sincerely appreciate your efforts, but you might want to look into your hiring practices and aim for people with an English level mildly beyond Middle School and an IQ at least 25% higher then road gravel. That will make spotting you much more exciting! We'll be sure to tell all our friends on BookFace about it!

You're not suggesting that indexal is an employee of EA, and that's why the account only posts comments on SimCity discussions, are you?

In fact, not only that, but he has (at least) two accounts: indexat and indexal. If you do a search, you'll find that both of them are only used to post in SimCity threads to defend the EA corporate stance. For some reason I am not able to use the report post function (perhaps because I am not a subcriber here?) but someone who is able to, can you please report this to moderators as these are pretty clearly EA corporate shill accounts.

I would sincerely hope he's not a corporate shill, because he's terrible at PR. He makes me dislike the upcoming SimCity stuff more than before. He has the emotional maturity of a rotten turnip. He predominantly makes personal attacks rather than explaining what's good about a SimCity game.

Anyway, if you wanted to playtest this game, just make a bunch of fake Facebook accounts. Facebook really didn't mind boosted user numbers to crow about; that might change now that they've already done their IPO, but I doubt it. As a doll city, it might be mildly amusing, without the SimCity name.

If anything else, the game is an attempt to grab some of Zynga's audience and everybody else not so familiar with the SC franchise, in preparation for the 2013 release. It's not directly intended for core players - they already explained that during the previous E3. The writer should have known that, but apparently... lol

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.